Keynote Speaker

Catherine D’Ignazio

• Director of the Data + Feminism Lab
• Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
• Board of Directors, Indigenous Women Rising

Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, we present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.